Rachel Noah

Rachel is a DPhil candidate at the Centre for Criminology at the Faculty of Law. Her project focuses on Palestinian prisoners incarcerated for terror offences in Israel, as a test case for exploring how political conflict shapes penal practices. The project is co-supervised by Professor Mary Bosworth and Professor Lucia Zedner and is funded by the Green Templeton College DPhil Scholarship.

Before coming to Oxford, Rachel has worked as a defence counsel for both the private sector and the in-house staff of the Israeli Public Defence Office. She has received her LLB from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds an MA degree in Gender Studies from Tel Aviv University, as Magna Cum Laude. In 2019, she completed the MSc Programme in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Centre for Criminology in Oxford. Since law school, Rachel has focused on issues relating to human rights, international law and the criminal justice system in Israel, as a research assistant, a volunteer in various Israeli NGOs and a practitioner. Among other things, she has been involved in supporting asylum seekers in Israel, facilitating sessions on sexuality and gender to youth groups and organising dialogue sessions of Palestinian and Israeli students. At the Public Defence Office, she represented clients in criminal and administrative proceedings, instructed external counsels and co-managed the Office's representation of incarcerated juveniles. During her years in practice, she represented and advised on cases of Palestinian prisoners, both juveniles and adults, who are held in prisons in Israel.